Washington Stalls the Food-Truck Lobby

May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Washington has recently become an
unlikely hotbed of culinary innovation, with entrepreneurs
flocking to this historically stodgy meat-and-two-veg city for
the chance to feed dulce de leche cupcakes and kimchi tacos to
the masses. Office drones rejoice at the expanded lunch options,
but restaurants are less happy.

So, unsurprisingly, they have turned to the government.
In the epic war between upstart little guys and the alliance of
big business and government, Capitol Hill isn’t the only
battleground. Skirmishes break out everywhere, including the
shabby-genteel halls of the District Building.

“It’s not competition, it’s an infestation!” exclaimed
Steve Loeb, the owner of Loeb’s Deli, at a nine-hour committee
hearing earlier this month. The pastrami purveyor was protesting
the plague of food trucks parked in the public square near his
restaurant. The council’s committee on business, consumer and
regulatory affairs was considering the fourth set of proposed
rules for food trucks in as many years.

Right now, food trucks are creating a commons problem: They
are using public resources without paying for what they consume.
The natural result is sidewalk congestion, parking wars and
more. The District’s proposed regulations, however, fail
spectacularly to address those issues.

Confused Exchanges

The new rules would limit longer-term parking to special
approved vending zones, while insisting that roving vehicles
stop only in places with 10 feet of unobstructed sidewalk that
are also at least 500 feet from a traditional restaurant or
official food-truck zone. Spots in the vending zones, to be
provisioned by lottery, would cost from $150 to $400 a month.

Or maybe not. It was hard to tell: Much of the hearing was
consumed with confused exchanges about what the regulations
actually require. And no one -- not the vendors, not the
regulators, not the industry associations -- seemed to be sure
about how the 75 pages of new rules would be implemented.

Loeb was just one voice in the bricks-and-mortar
establishment chorus, a cluster of old-school restaurants hoping
to employ the power of the city government to keep roving cooks
off their turf. And perhaps they feel that they are owed a
favor. Owning a restaurant in Washington is pretty terrible.
During the hearing, the president of the restaurant lobby said
she “would not wish the level of regulation we face on anyone.”

She wasn’t being entirely honest. Restaurant owners are
understandably sore about the onerous regulations and high taxes
the city imposes. And they are taking out their frustrations on
every burrito truck and banh mi buggy in sight.

Of course, this collaboration of big business and big
government wouldn’t be possible without that crucial third
ingredient: big ego. Councilor Vincent B. Orange offered an
astonishingly candid take on the government’s position. “You do
have to give the government some deference,” he said. “Right now
there are 200 trucks, and I think the government has a right to
say the limit is 250. That’s it. That’s going to be our food-truck industry.”

Speaking of which: The food-truck industry has its own
trade association, thank you, as well as a novel way of rallying
its constituency: by starving them.

Food trucks at Farragut Square, a patch of semi-greenery
amid Washington’s skyscraper stumps, staged a protest a few days
before the hearing, arriving early to occupy their usual spots
but refusing to open for business during the peak of the lunch
rush. Thus did local diners get a taste of the terrifying
dystopia that awaits them if onerous regulations pass. One pub
owner, citing payroll, taxes and other costs, lamented during
the hearing that he couldn’t stage a similar protest.

Vexing Dilemmas

This, in a nutshell, is the restaurant owner’s dilemma.
It’s not all about regulation, though that’s part of it. A
traditional restaurant is a great lumbering beast. If customers
stop liking what it’s dishing up, it can’t just turn on a dime.
Food trucks can. (Yes, some of them are quite large, but they
are still smaller than the local Italian joint.)

For now at least, Washington remains relatively hospitable
to the food-truck industry. (The Institute for Justice’s
excellent Food Truck Freedom project has a good rundown of the
national scene.) The good news is the bad news, or maybe vice
versa: The regulatory process seems to be stalled, and confusion
and dissension reign.

Still, many food-truck owners are just one cracked engine
block or arbitrary parking rule away from calling it quits. One
of the city’s highest-rated vendors, Basil Thyme, may close in
the next few weeks. Brian Farrell, who owns the pasta and
lasagna trucks, points the floury finger of blame straight at
regulators: “The city of D.C. has been nothing but a series of
hurdles and difficulties,” he told a reporter for CityPaper, the
local alternative weekly. “They’re just painful to deal with.”

That was followed by one of the saddest sentences a foodie
could ever read about a successful culinary entrepreneur:
Farrell, the paper said, “plans to return to his previous career
in IT sales.”

(Katherine Mangu-Ward is managing editor of Reason
magazine. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this article:
Katherine Mangu-Ward at kmw@reason.com or @kmanguward on Twitter